19. CHAPTER XIX
(continued)

"I don't understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my
life."

"If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm."

"And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?"

"To be sure."

I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which
she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned
it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She ached her face to
the palm, and pored over it without touching it.

"It is too fine," said she. "I can make nothing of such a hand as
that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is
not written there."

"I believe you," said I.

"No," she continued, "it is in the face: on the forehead, about the
eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head."

"Ah! now you are coming to reality," I said, as I obeyed her. "I
shall begin to put some faith in you presently."

I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a
ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however,
as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it
illumined.

"I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night," she said,
when she had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy
in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the
fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern:
just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as
if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual
substance."